1. society

THE QUANDARY OF SOCIAL
PRACTICE: WHY EMPATHY? WHY RISK?
perform a series of public events that explore how we grieve and remember
teens who have died from gun violence. In a performance called Silence the
Silence, students led visitors through the museum, stopping to punctuate
moments through spoken word, song and dance. The performance culminated
with an offering of white roses—one for every young person killed in the past
year—leaving a chilling tribute on the gallery floor. Many of the students involved
have been personally affected by gun violence and shared their own stories of
loss, sorrow, rage and hope through their words and movement, leaving a lasting
impact on their audience witnesses.
Amy M. Mooney, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Art History and Neysa Page-Lieberman, Director and
Curator of the Department of Exhibitions, Performance and Student Spaces, Columbia College Chicago
RISK: Empathy, Art and Social Practice considers the
reciprocal role that empathy and risk play within the
context of Chicago’s burgeoning social practice movement.
The work included in the exhibition is divergent in medium,
content and scope, but shares an interest in initiating and
negotiating relationships through personal interaction.
To varying degrees, the participating artists extend themselves to others, risking
the personal and the political. RISK highlights some of the most exciting projects
emerging in this field and explores the motivations and expectations of social
art practice. From Edgewater to Greater Grand Crossing, we invited viewers to
traverse the neighborhoods where these actions took place and to engage in a
robust series of programs and projects.
Looking to the city as a whole, we sought a wide-reaching network of sites,
places, groups and neighborhoods that reflect the goal of unifying people in
order to expand our understanding of ourselves and each other. The Chicago
RISK map illustrates how artist-generated collaborations form points of
connectivity and reveals socially engaged “hot-spots.” The initial exhibition
partners—6018North, Hyde Park Art Center and Rebuild Foundation—are now
joined by dozens more, including Chicago High School for the Arts, Civic Lab, En
Las Tablas Performing Arts, Hemlock of Illinois, Museum of Contemporary Art,
and Sacred Keepers Sustainability Youth Garden. The artists and organizations
demonstrate how reciprocity, mutual dependence, interconnectedness and civic
engagement occur not only on the level of the individual makers, but also within
the organizations and communities that support and drive their work.
CHICAGO’S SHARED SOCIAL EXPERIENCE
Community engagement has played a central role in Chicago’s cultural scene.
From classes at the historic Hull House to the establishment of the South Side
Community Art Center, art was expected to provide a social opportunity. More
recently, a significant number of Chicago artists have generated projects that go
beyond a mutual experience, creating situations that rely on public participation.
Collaboration and dialogue serve as tools central to the realization of this art
form. In neighborhoods, community centers, museums and galleries, the efforts
of socially engaged projects point to a growing movement toward interdependence rather than separation. Using formats that challenge our expectations of
“art,” such as potlucks, story exchanges or dance parties, the artists produce a
myriad of creative experiences, all working toward establishing relationships and
connecting communities. To do so, the artists and their participants rely upon
two linked phenomena: empathy and risk.
Drawing from the world of relational aesthetics, artists often employ empathy
in their work when crossing social boundaries, seeking cooperation and the
formation of new communities. Social practice reveals our mutual dependencies
upon one another, yet the generosity, acceptance and reciprocity that such work
demands is difficult to establish and even more challenging to sustain. Current
evaluative determinants of “success” and “failure” fall short of explaining the experience of projects that are porous, in flux and process-based. The importance
of reciprocity and the constant and careful work that its facilitation requires
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is something that many of the artists in RISK acknowledge. Yet the numerous
meetings, emails and personal conversations that generate the projects are
often only known to the artists and those involved. Further, the value of feeling
included and socially accepted may not be readily quantifiable.
Given the challenges of this art form, this survey exhibition considers how artists
and collectives negotiate the efficacy, ethics and risks inherent in its realization.
For many, “risk” implies an evaluative matrix of the extent to which one can
sustain and maintain a practice during a period of uncertainty. Following the
polemical assertions of Ulrich Beck’s Risk Society, we imagine a modern era of
calculable outcomes and known circumstances that guide our decision making
and daily interactions. For the artists in RISK, the ethical question of making
such projections prominently plays out in their work. The contingency between if/
then, and/or, us/them constitutes a reality that is continually under negotiation.
As such, the forms realized in the gallery serve as placeholders, symbolic of the
artists’ broader practice and its reflexivity to people and their environments. In
short, RISK challenges the negative connotations of the “culture of dependency”
and calls out for a reconsideration of one’s relationship with self, society and site.
MOVING WITHIN AND WITHOUT: THE ART OF RISK
For those within the art scene, the nomenclature of this sort of socially engaged
work varies—relational aesthetics, new genre public art, participatory art—yet
it is increasingly difficult to categorize and ever-expanding. Recent publications such as Tom Finkelpearl’s What We Made: Conversations on Art and Social
Cooperation and Claire Bishop’s Artificial Hells: Participatory Art and the Politics
of Spectatorship testify to the contemporary relevance of this art form and its
contested development. For Finkelpearl, “social cooperation” best describes the
intellectual rigor that marks the negotiations of these ambitious and demanding
projects that leave indelible marks on our civic consciousness, later influencing
our sense of political enfranchisement. In contrast, Bishop is wary of the negotiations between points of reciprocity and altruism, concerned that too many
projects border on social work, reflecting the aspirations of “do gooders and
hand-wringers” rather than the critical practices of artists. Other voices note that
the rise in social practice parallels the loss of government entitlements and the
proliferation of austerity measures.
Beyond these academic realms, the enactment of social practice is equally
charged. The distinction between what is done for the community versus done
with the community is significant. Too often, community members are asked to
participate in such projects, but rarely consulted in the formation of objectives
and structure. It is for this reason that several of the artists in RISK generate platforms that can be utilized by the community, projecting the artists’ concern for
their interests into the public realm. For example, Faheem Majeed’s Shacks and
Shanties consists of dwelling-like structures with “front porch” stages for invited
artists and neighbors to perform, gather and meet. Earlier manifestations, in an
abandoned lot in Bronzeville and a rooftop in Hyde Park, provided a crossroads
for “visiting” and nearby artists and neighbors to connect and experience each
others’ work. Months of meetings, interviews and public conversations precede
the choice of location, the start of building and the planning of programming. The process of programming must stay fluid, constantly responding to
audience desires and adversary critiques. For RISK, Majeed had to consider how
presenting this work in an academic art gallery would impact its meaning for
Students visit from
Changing Worlds /Dream Chicago.
Photo by David Weathersby.
audiences ranging from first year students to South Loop residents. He blended
the emerging with the established, inviting Columbia College student Khalfani
from Impolite Society to perform with the legendary post-industrial rock band
ONO. Similarly, Columbia students infiltrated the Margaret Burroughs Collective,
paying homage to the artist/activist who established the DuSable Art Museum.
People gravitate toward the Shacks as its warm and worn surfaces breathe life
into the space and provide a welcoming and engaging platform.
Like Majeed’s dependence on communities to activate his work, Kirsten
Leenaars believes that individuals have an inherent desire to feel connected
to others. Relationship-building, story-gathering, sharing and carefully established trust are central to her practice as she delves into the hopes, aspirations
and dreams of the people she works with. As a self-professed story collector,
Leenaars gathers, archives and readapts others’ stories into collective narratives, often performed live or filmed in a soap opera format. The video and
live performances of Not In Another Place, But This Place... (Happiness) is the
culmination of a two year period that was initiated by the Edgewater gallery and
performance site, 6018North. For this piece, Leenaars explored the political
nature of happiness, guided by questions such as, “Who is responsible for happiness?” and “How can individual perceptions about happiness be translated into
a collective story?” As a neighborhood artist-in-residence, Leenaars immersed
herself in the Edgewater community, establishing the “Bureau for Investigation of
Strategies for Happiness, Community and Policy Development,” a pop-up space
used to conduct interviews. Neighbors, city workers, local policy makers, the
Alderman, community activists, students—anybody who felt like walking into her
office—were welcomed to talk about what happiness meant to them. She invited
these participants to be her artistic collaborators using the months of interviews
to generate a loose script for Happiness. Some of the participants joined the cast
and nearby Senn High School became the set for production of this three-channel immersive video installation. In conjunction with the exhibition, live performances of the original score for the video were performed at 6018North by
composer Dan Bitney and musicians Matthew Lux and Leroy Bahh, deepening
the experience for those who saw their contributions realized for the first time.
Other artists in RISK use the community-driven model as a means for exposing a
specific societal or political issue, revealing perspectives too often left out of the
media spotlight. Cheryl Pope’s Just Yell project draws together youth from several
neighborhoods and schools that are most affected by gun violence, whose voices
are rarely given a public platform. Inspired by high school students’ personal
experiences, Pope asks the students to write, perform and design, seeking new
ways to attract the public’s attention. This collaborative and bold work manifests
in finely crafted banners, artist books, and other visual and performance-based
forms. For RISK, Pope invited students from Chicago High School for the Arts
and the Museum of Contemporary Art’s Teen Creative Agency to create and
With a similar intention, Jim Duignan’s Stockyard Institute has invested decades
into creating and sustaining a creative platform for the voices of youth affected
by gang violence. Making efforts to secure the anonymity of those involved,
Duignan seeks out “safe” places (often in abandoned buildings) for participants
to gather, share, write and produce work. Recognizing that having a platform
to speak can be rare, Duignan offers this fully equipped mobile podium, for
both formal and informal presentations and discussions. The Social Podium for
a Public Rehearsal can be pulled into a public arena or into an intimate quiet
space and is available for anyone’s use. The piece is designed to encourage
people to develop a practice and process for public speaking. The artist envisions
the gallery as a studio, a unique space and opportunity to build one’s agency and
audience. Inside the podium, speakers will find materials, booklets and resources to guide their presentations, reflecting Duignan’s longtime commitment
to pedagogy. The accompanying Venn diagram depicts the overlap between key
elements of personal, physical and psychological states of public versus private
speaking. Throughout the duration of the exhibition, Duignan invited anonymous
groups as well as established advocacy collectives such as Proyecto Algarabía
to join him in the gallery for workshops to engage in the transformative power of
public speaking.
Active political engagement also informs the work of the collective Museum of
Contemporary Phenomenon (MCP). Working in numerous neighborhoods and
with a range of issues, the group asserts that apathy is not what prevents individuals and communities from political engagement. Rather, it is a lack of access to
systems and tools that hampers their enfranchisement. In an effort to continue
broad work and activity, the group partnered with Civic Lab to produce I, Citizen,
a role-playing game to empower those who want to speak for or fight against an
issue. During the exhibition, MCP offered a series of workshops to explore strategies for increasing public participation in the essential acts of citizenship. The
gallery installation served as the participants’ portal, where potential MAKERS,
PLAYERS and WATCHERS chose roles and received their first assignments. These
designations helped to identify the interdependency of political systems and the
ways that we can shift our degrees of engagement and responsibility as citizens.
As the projects, tools and experience of the game developed, players of I, Citizen
realized true participatory democracy consists of more than a mouse click.
Video still by Devin Cain picturing live footage of
Cecil McDonald’s Video Dance Party.
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Potluck: Chicago performing at Wedding to the Unknown.
Photo by David Ettinger.
Alberto Aguilar’s dinner parties and Potluck: Chicago’s meal-sharing events are
inspired by the desire to form connections and ask participants to take certain
risks along the way. The universal enjoyment of sharing a meal with others forms
the basis for their multidisciplinary presentations. For RISK, Aguilar constructed the Lunchroom Expanse installation where he offered bi-weekly catered
lunches to foster the appreciation of the nourishing role that meal-sharing
and place-making plays in our daily lives. Aguilar built this installation first and
foremost as an aesthetic arrangement, something he feels can get lost in social
practice. Constructed with a minimal selection of domestic materials, this space
presents simultaneous visual obstructions and mirrored expansions. This place
of uncertainty and anticipation reflects the experience of meeting and sharing
a meal with strangers. Aguilar has a rich history of creating experimental dinner
parties for guests comprised mostly of strangers. His invitations and agendas
are shrouded in mystery, encouraging his participants to take a leap into the
unknown and cross boundaries of comfort. In return, he strives to entertain,
surprise and inspire his guests. His second piece for RISK wove poetry, performance and gift-giving into the fabric of a real-life wedding for a real-life couple
married at City Hall, but who could not afford to host their own wedding. Aguilar
offered the couple a “free, artist-designed wedding” where their nuptials would
be celebrated by unknown invitees and passersby alike, extending a private life
event into a public celebration. Staged as Wedding to the Unknown, the multicultural event kicked off with an American Indian ceremony, which led into a five
course meal, all provided by Aguilar’s artist-collaborators. Guests were treated to
henna tattooing, recipe sharing, an elaborate cake, and finally a ritual-led cleaning
performance, all of which played out to a score of R&B music, mixed on vintage
vinyl recordings by a live dj.
In preparation for the exhibition, Potluck: Chicago, a collective formed through
Columbia College’s civic engagement program, hosted four collective meals
around the city, soliciting recipes for comfort food. Their efforts underscore the
ways that food can cut across cultural divides. Though many come to the table as
strangers, they leave knowing of their shared experiences of immigration, family
and cooking, as well as their commitments to neighborhood diversity and community improvement. Potluck’s interactive installation in RISK drew visitors of
all ages, who pulled up chairs, wrote their favorite comfort recipes from memory
and clipped their cards on to ever-expanding strands of other peoples’ recipes.
During the exhibition, the collective hosted three more potlucks, soliciting even more
contributions for their recipe box that will be shared with audiences across Chicago.
The participating artists extend
themselves to others, risking the
personal and the political.
Fereshteh Toosi leading Heritage Tea Time event.
Photo by Jess Zambrano.
Risky
8 Encounters performance.
Photo by Kelsey Lindsey.
The cultivation of food also informs the work of Fereshteh Toosi and her manifold
RISK project, which incorporated storytelling, history, agriculture, healing and
multisensory experiences. During the exhibition, the artist tended to multiple
installations of Anxiety Garden (both on and off-site) which focused on the therapeutic properties of gardening for self-care and medicine and simultaneously
addressed the political anxieties of contemporary culture. From jars of Iranian
pickled garlic to oyster mushrooms grown on economics books to the cultivation
and distribution of medicinal herbs, Toosi considers the intersection between
food production and public policy, underscoring the economic and cultural risks
that dictate our diet. Toosi’s work celebrates ancestral wisdom and the ethics
of “do-it-together” ecologies. She draws from a belief that folk traditions and
community gardening can be sites of resistance to individualization. In close consultation with her mother, family recipes and traditions, Toosi held a number of
interactive events that addressed the intersection of food, culture and empathy.
Operation Pickle focused on Persian new year traditions and homemade Iranian
pickled garlic (torshi-eh seer), known as Seven-Year Pickle because it is left to age
for seven years before consumption. Another event featured the transplanting of
seedlings of powerful medicinal herbs—skullcap, valerian, St. John’s Wort—from
the gallery to the College’s outdoor Papermakers’ Garden where Toosi intends to
maintain and distribute them indefinitely.
Another mode of social practice is demonstrated through the portrait driven photography and archival culling by Samantha Hill and Cecil McDonald, Jr. Through
capturing and gathering likenesses, the two artists create narratives that
illustrate the fluid shift between individual and collective identities. McDonald
haunts public dance events, taking pictures by the hundreds. Hill roams estate
sales to collect intriguing, discarded portraits. The artists display their work in
ways that not only reveal fleeting moments, but also suggest social relationships
that could fill lost chapters of history. Both are drawn to dance, as a unifying
form of expression and as a historical marker of significant cultural moments.
McDonald’s work is driven by Chicago House music and involves taking pictures
of dancers, djs and onlookers, acknowledging the city’s deep influence on the
international currency and political agency of this musical form. With Columbia’s
Black Student Union and a crew of cinematographers, McDonald and DJ Sadie
Woods held a dance party to launch RISK, recording the virtuosic “flash” of
dancers in both still and video formats. Culling through the footage, McDonald
then layered in clips from a wide array of sources—from a 1950s science fiction
film called Tarantula to the agility and trickery of the Martinique dance, Ag’ya
Danmye Ladja, to a frenzied excising of a person afflicted with tarantism—to
demonstrate the universal and collective ecstasy generated through dance.
During the exhibition, McDonald invited the dancers to a public forum to discuss
their representations, investigating the tensions between how one sees oneself
versus how that self is viewed by others.
The relevance and categorization
of some forms of social practice
continues to inspire debate.
Samantha Hill’s transdisciplinary practice is inspired by archiving, portraiture,
oral recordings and artful facilitations. By capturing and collecting individuals’
likenesses and their personal stories, Hill builds narratives and reclaims history.
Often working on site-specific projects, she conducts extensive interviews
with neighbors and walk-ins to her roving “studio.” Her current work focuses
on Bronzeville where she produces and collects vintage tintype photographs,
forming the basis for a Swing era “happening,” called Stompin’ at the Parkway
Ballroom. This historic venue, with its jazz legacy, complements Hill’s intent of
connecting contemporary audiences with the historic relevance of the Great
Migration and the Chicago Black Renaissance. Further RISK projects included
a satellite installation at Hyde Park Art Center, where Hill constructed an interactive map of her collection process and invited the public to make the events
and stories of the Bronzeville Renaissance more visible by adding their personal
responses to the display. For the Glass Curtain Gallery, Hill told the story of
Sherry Williams, founder of the Bronzeville Historical Society. Using photographs,
recordings and projections within the interior of Faheem Majeed’s Shack, Hill
crafted The Gatekeeper to connect Williams’ life to the collective experience of the
Great Migration, noting that like many African Americans, her family relocated to
Chicago from the south. Through her tribute to this cultural leader, Hill furthers
the mission of the Bronzeville Historical Society celebrating, educating and
encouraging the preservation of black life and culture in Chicago.
As previously noted, the relevance and categorization of some forms of social
practice continues to inspire debate. Projects by Jennifer Mills and Industry of
the Ordinary take a conceptual approach to social practice, while also subtly
critiquing the art form. Mills’ collaborators are almost exclusively strangers
to her, whom she meets during her live performances. With a background in
improv, she often performs in character and incorporates participants without
their knowledge or prior agreement. Her work calls into question the degree of
imposition and response that artists expect from their audiences as well as the
audience’s expectations for interactivity and inclusivity. Her humorous contribution references carnival cutouts where viewers can assume different identities
by inserting their heads and taking a photo. Using a caricature of her previous
projects, she queries whether audiences really want to authentically connect
with others or merely accumulate the signs and experiences of participatory
culture. Mills exposes how engaging in and documenting one’s participation
does not necessarily correspond with a sincere commitment to social change.
Further, the artist asks if the context of an art gallery or museum diminishes the
power of social engagement, or validates its artistic value. Many visitors took the
artist’s tongue in cheek critique with a grain of salt, and accepted Mills’ goodhumored invitation to Step Right Up and smile for the camera.
The limitations of our social engagement are further interrogated by the collaborative efforts of Industry of the Ordinary (IOTO). Working with Hemlock of Illinois,
a “death with dignity” organization, IOTO seeks to address our continued social
relationships with the deceased as well as our own struggle to come to terms
with mortality. During the exhibition, and beyond, the artists offer contracts in
which they promise to create a portrait of the participant upon her or his death.
As part of the agreement, the subject relinquishes control over the display and
promulgation of the resulting image, potentially allowing for a distribution of their
portrait within an unknown context. Participants begin to form a group whose
only connection is a similar desire to be depicted postmortem. Interested parties
contact IOTO through email to arrange an initial consultation to discuss their
motivation for participation. Following the precedent of a pre-paid funeral, the
portrait commission will involve a set of aesthetic choices for sitters to make,
yet the final likeness will never be seen by them. This project is an extension of a
larger inquiry as to the role of the portrait in society. For their recent mid-career
survey at the Chicago Cultural Center, the collective commissioned seventy-one
portraits of themselves from Chicago-based artists. The intention of the project
was threefold; to create a collective work that reveals the artists behind the
portraits; to reflect on the place of the portrait in contemporary art practice;
and to consider the motivations behind the enduring urge to fashion a likeness.
Certainly, a portrait promises immortality, yet the uncertainties of this project
undermine the expectations of mimesis and memory.
CONCLUSION AND LOOKING FORWARD
Chicago has had a significant role in supporting and generating the imaginative
experiments that fill the city. From John Dewey to Jane Addams to Emmanuel
Pratt, we are the inheritors of the pragmatic progressives’ vision of the social
experience of art. Pivotal organizations and sites such as Dorchester Projects,
Experimental Station, South Side Hub of Production and Stockyard Institute are
the present day manifestations of these ideals. Local cultural makers, producers and advocates keep Chicago in the international spotlight. Tricia Van Eck,
founder of the alternative exhibition space 6018North, presents the cutting-edge
of social art practice in Chicago, introducing countless artists into the public art
dialogue. Her program RISKY ENCOUNTERS, which accompanied the RISK exhibition, demonstrated how audience participation directly affects artistic production
and reception. Ever aware of the flux of public engagement, curator Mary Jane
Jacob is launching an exhibition and series of books that examine the historical
precedents for Chicago’s explosive social art scene. Co-produced with artist and
educator Pablo Helguera, this multi-tiered project, A Proximity of Consciousness:
Art and Social Action, considers Chicago as a crossroads for socially conscious
art where the last two decades of social projects can be traced back to the city’s
activist thinkers and movements of the early twentieth century. The artists,
curators and collaborators of RISK embrace this legacy, and through risk and
empathy, push it forward.
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